


Fire and Progress

by CaseOpen_CaseShut



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: (I'm not really sure how to calculate plot quantity), F/F, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Internalized Homophobia, Kind of the everyone is gay trope--but not everyone is gay, Long, M/M, Plot (a lot of plot--or at least a fair amount of plot), Self-Acceptance!, Slow Burn, but we will be focusing on the gay ones, friendship!, only some of them
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-12
Updated: 2020-07-12
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:21:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25218445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaseOpen_CaseShut/pseuds/CaseOpen_CaseShut
Summary: It’s Friday, and Zuko wakes up early, as usual. He’s a morning person; always has been. Most firebenders are, of course—they’re taught from a young age that their unique relationship with the sun means they ought to rise with it, or at least close to it. It’s widely encouraged throughout the Fire Nation, even for non-benders.Mai’s told him that she thinks it’s bullshit.(Politics. Relationships. Estranged sisters. Friends. And, worst of all--self discovery.)
Relationships: Aang/Katara (Avatar), Azula & Mai (Avatar), Mai & Zuko (Avatar), Mai/Zuko (Avatar) (Brief), Sokka & Zuko (Avatar), Sokka/Zuko (Avatar), Toph Beifong & Zuko
Comments: 21
Kudos: 144





	Fire and Progress

**Author's Note:**

> I'm excited to say that I've finally embarked on the journey of writing a longer slow burn fic, and here is the first chapter! This first chapter is fairly introductory, but I hope you enjoy it anyway! I'll leave anything else I have to say for my notes at the end.

It’s Friday, and Zuko wakes up early, as usual. He’s a morning person; always has been. Most firebenders are, of course—they’re taught from a young age that their unique relationship with the sun means they ought to rise with it, or at least close to it. It’s widely encouraged throughout the Fire Nation, even for non-benders. Mai’s told him that she thinks it’s bullshit.

 _Just more propaganda. Keeps us productive_ , she tells him now on the rare occasion he is in the position to say hello to her in the mornings. Sometime between the end of the war and the moment he’d settled into his role as Fire Lord, she’d developed a distrustful streak that rivaled the Fire Nation’s biggest critics. Coincidentally, that sort of response is a part of the attitude that seems to be making his appearance in her chambers in the mornings so rare in the first place.

He usually dismisses the rarity of waking up next to Mai as sympathy for her dislike of morning, but if he’s really honest with himself (which he’s trying to be, nowadays), more important is the fact that Mai has been somewhat distant recently. They’ve never—well, they’ve never really been as… intimate… as they might have been, but there was a time, shortly after the end of the war, that they would sleep in the same bed almost every night, more for comfort than anything else. It was good at the time. Actually, really good. He’d needed a warm body—something to keep him grounded. But as the months wore on, he’d gotten busier and busier, and the arrangement had fallen apart.

He shakes off the remainders of sleep (from what he remembers, he got five hours—not bad, all considered), dresses, grabs the folder he keeps for notes, and heads to his daily meeting with his advisors.  
There had initially been uproarious interest when he’d chosen advisors, but blessedly, he’d managed to whittle the candidates down to two months ago. He chose them carefully. The first, Wai, was an easy choice—she had been decisively against the war and the Fire Nation’s government from the beginning. He’d heard her name from his father’s mouth periodically though his childhood, usually in the context of protest or dissent or _insolent fucking colonial traitors_ , and the first thing he’d done when he’d gone to find an advisor as to seek her out. Sometimes, she reminds him of Azula, if Azula was older and not so… _Azula_. She’s sharp and effective and well-spoken, with an edge of self righteousness that makes her both magnetic and… well… a little annoying, at times. In a good way.

Anticipating the pushback he could get for employing someone most of the public (and almost all of the palace staff) considered a semi-unhinged radical, he’d had made his second choice accordingly—Advisor Moto had been the most moderate candidate Zuko had been comfortable hiring, and a solid predictor of public reaction. In some ways, Moto reminds him of his uncle—and by some ways, he means mainly that he’s old, and also that sometimes Zuko cannot figure out what the hell he’s saying through the riddles he insists on talking in. Outside of that, Moto is less compassionate than what Zuko might want in a father figure, but he’s perfectly suited for giving a harsh critique.  
He likes them, but not enough to wholeheartedly _enjoy_ discussing in-depth policy every day.

When he gets to the room, Wai holding her teacup in her hands, bending the tea hotter. Moto is pushing his up towards her in an effort to get her to heat his as well.  
Zuko takes his place at the table, gently placing his folder in front of him.

Wai turns her head to look at him, her hands now on Moto’s cup. “What are we discussing today, Zuko?”

He tries not to smile too hard at her use of his name (it had taken him months before even the most liberal of the palace staff were willing to call him anything less formal than “Fire Lord Zuko”) and flips through his papers, suppressing his disappointment when he sees the list of meetings for the day.

“Well… I suppose we should talk about the colonies. Looks like I’m seeing the Earth Kingdom’s ambassador today.”

“Why?” Moto questions, his tone verging on sarcastic. “I thought you already knew what to do with them.”

It’s a joke—Zuko’s spent the last few weeks agonizing over what to do with the colonies.

He tries not to let the annoyance he feels (at the dilemma, not his advisors) show through. “I keep going back and forth. I know that they can’t be fully under my power—”

Wai nods, because she’s big on the whole relinquishing power thing, but Moto jumps in to finish Zuko’s sentence.

“But we still have people there.”

Zuko hums. “Yes. And the Earth Kingdom might want them back.”

They argue back and forth about it for a few minutes, but Wai eventually calls the debate off, a hint of acid in her tone. Zuko knows she resents the colonies for their complexity—she’s usually a fan of simple solutions that give more than they retain, but being a colonial herself, she’s seen how intertwined the two communities are. There’s no easy solution.

“Let’s talk about the newspapers,” Moto proposes.

That’s something newer. Ever since he’d announced the removal of most of the laws that criminalized dissent in speech or in the press, new sources have been cropping up—some good, some less so.  
Wai’s head snaps up—free speech is one of her things. “You have a meeting with a few of the heads of the most prominent new papers today. They want to know how you’ll be communicating with them, and they have a few requests.”

“More like a million complaints,” Moto says at a volume that can only just be described as under his breath. Wai shoots him a look, then turns to Zuko expectantly.  
“I’m thinking I’ll appoint someone to communicate with them on a regular basis. What are they asking for?”

“You know what they want,” Wai says, maybe unnecessarily pointedly.

Of course. It’s the repeal of that last law—it’s the least strict one, but still places some limits on how critical the media can get.

He waves his hand. “At this point, I’m willing to get rid of it.”

At that, Wai breaks into a victorious smile. Moto seems exasperated. “Fire Lord Zuko—”

He’s not quite done correcting _everyone_. “Just Zuko,”

Moto soldiers on. “You open yourself to political attack from every side! I’ll remind you that your popularity is somewhat lacking lately.”

They’ve talked about this before, but at this point Zuko is sure. “Yes, but that law doesn’t help. If anything, the papers’ resentment of the law just prompts more of the thinly-veiled criticism they’re already using.”  
Honestly, the press is not the only reason his popularity has been lacking. It’s more because of…

“Fine!” Moto says. “Then agree to leave up the statues.”

The statues.

Zuko _hates_ this debate.

“No,” he says.

“They’re cultural monuments,” Moto reminds him. “I understand that you have strong feelings about some of them—”

“Because they’re representative of the perpetuation of a conflict that greatly harmed the world!” he interrupts, louder than he intended.

“BUT,” Moto says, looking at him stiffly, “the people find their history in them.”

Wai stays quiet, probably because she knows that on this issue, she and Zuko have similar points of view.

“They shouldn’t,” Zuko says.

Moto sighs. “But they do. If you take down any more in the near future, I guarantee you it will only be used as further leverage against you.”

As much as he hates to admit it, Moto is right… for now. He can’t justify taking them down when he knows it will only lower the already precarious public opinion. But, _spirits_ —it hurts him to do it.

Most things, he finds personal. He’s seen the things the Fire nation has done—to the Air Nomads, to the Earth Kingdom, to the water tribes, even its own people—but there’s something about the statues of war-era leaders that really gets to him. Maybe because it’s so easy for him to see that they’re not the people he should be worshipping.

Maybe it’s because seeing his father’s face in the line of statues outside the palace sometimes makes him feel so many conflicting emotions that he worries he’ll do something drastic. Like punch something. Or throw up.

“Someday,” he says. “But not now.”

Moto looks triumphant and Wai’s frustration shows, but the debate is over, and he has to get to his next meeting, anyway. It’s the Earth ambassador.

“I’m just going to listen to their proposals about the colonies and try to stall,” he tells them. Its his go-to tactic when he’s backed into a corner, so he doesn’t really have a choice.

\---

The meeting takes _forever_ and accomplishes virtually nothing, but he gets mail around lunchtime, which is usually a good part of his day. There’s various messages. One is a short card from Ty Lee—which is surprising, because she normally only writes to Mai, but understandable, because she’s asking for something on behalf of the Kyoshi Warriors and the letter is co-signed by Suki—and a few are the citizen letters the people who open his mail think he ought to read.

On the bottom, though, he’s excited to find two more personal letters: one from Sokka, and one from Toph.

Toph’s letter is written in Katara’s handwriting, which is somehow at once meticulous and so loopy it’s a little hard. Toph’s been off with her and Aang looking for air nomad stuff for a while now, just long enough for her to get bored, so it’s not a huge surprise when the letter just reads:

_“Dear Sifu Hotman,_

_Water Girl and Twinkle Toes are boring. I’m showing up at the palace three weeks after I send this letter. Be ready for me.”_

Toph has signed the letter herself (and done a neat job of it for a girl who can’t see, though not all of the lines fully connect), and a lengthy apology from Katara is scrawled under it ( _“This is all her; she forced me to transcribe it…”_ ), along with a little drawing of Momo—presumably from Aang. If she had been coming three weeks from the date on the letter, she’ll be here soon.

He opens Sokka’s letter next, which is written on a rough piece of paper and looks like it’s gotten more than a little wet on its way. Luckily, Sokka’s script is the opposite of his sister’s—somewhat blocky, and very intelligible, even if the ink is a little runny.

Zuko doesn’t regularly exchange mail with most of his friends, but Sokka is the exception. It’s probably because Sokka’s so on top of responding, and always actually seems eager to talk. Sometimes he even has ideas, which Zuko rarely uses, but tries to consider nonetheless. Actually, it’s a little endearing that Sokka takes enough interest in the state affairs that Zuko tells him about to give input.  
Zuko wishes Sokka could solve the “colonies” issue.

_“Your Fieriness,_

_Your thing with the colonies seems rough. Sorry. I got nothing.”_

So much for that.

_“We’re good down here in the South. It’s pretty cool to see stuff taking shape. Things have gotten complicated lately, though—we’ve been communicating with the Northern Water Tribe more and more and they have their own ideas of how things should be done. I respect them, but sometimes I feel like they don’t respect us. You feel me?”_

He most definitely does. He’s known some of the members of his own cabinet to get testy with him if they don’t get their way.

_“It’s all right, though. I’m not even always in those meetings. I think they realized I was too hotheaded to work with those idiots, or something. Mostly I’m just kind of bored. I have responsibilities, but my dad is handling most of it. I don’t want to interfere—I think it’ll create.. what word would you use? Disunity?—but I’m also ending up kind of useless, in the scheme of things._  
_More time to go fishing, though._

_Regards,_

_Sokka”_

He looks at the clock and folds Sokka’s letter back into thirds, stuffing it and Toph’s into his folder.

\---

He leaves his meeting feeling exhausted. They were all nice enough, and certainly enthused when he told them he was planning to remove the last press law, but definitely... opinionated. Like having Wai around, but from all directions.

It takes a while to finish some paperwork and pen a (semi-sarcastic) letter to Sokka ( _“Dear Sokka, Thank you for your helpful plan for the colonies. It was much appreciated._ ), and then it’s time for dinner, which also means time to see Mai.

He’s not sure whether he’s looking forward to it or not.

He likes seeing her—he really does. But the thing is that recently… well, recently, things have been less-than-ideal with them. He’s been busy, and she’s been off doing whatever she does every day (combat training, maybe?), and they’ve barely exchanged words in the last few days.

When he think about it, he misses her. She’s a constant, at the very least—someone who’s been around since they were kids. She gets it— _him_ —more than most can.

So when he sits down with her in an inconspicuous section of a restaurant, he’s not sure why it feels awkward.

“How was your day?” she asks cooly. She’s gotten her tea already—he can smell that it’s ginseng, her go to as long as he’s known her.

“Fine,” he tells her. “How was yours?”

“All right,” she replies, a little reticent. They lapse into a silence that’s somewhere between companionable and awkward.

\---

They go back to his rooms that night after spending an hour and a half taking about nothing at dinner, each bidding a quick “hello” to the guards at his door. He knows both of them tonight; the older of the two is Tuan, who looks to be nearing fifty. Then there’s Yan, who he likes. He’s just few years older than Zuko—probably somewhere around 20, and is by far the youngest regularly stationed inside the palace his door. Zuko’s heard that Yan is somewhat of a prodigy in physical combat—the fact that that’s even reached him means something—and he looks it, broad shouldered and vital. The guard uniform, which can be a little baggy, fits him surprisingly well.

As soon as they’re inside his rom, Mai turns to face him.

“Kiss me?” she asks, her tone confusingly flat.

It’s weird—she’s been a little too forced all night, awkward. He’s not sure what to do, but... she asked, so he leans into her and bends down, touching his lips to hers.

She reacts with unusual energy, mouth open, her hands clasping around his neck. He reaches around her her back and guesses that he should feel something positive about this... but he’s actually a little uncomfortable. There’s something about the way she’s being that just doesn’t feel like all of this is what she wants or something, which is maybe stupid of him to think, because _she’s_ the one putting her tongue in his mouth, but it’s still weird.

And it’s even _weirder_ when she makes this weird frustrated sound in her throat and pulls away, breathing a little hard. It’s not like her to lose her composure this way, and he’s not really equipped to handle it, so he just stands there while she searches his face for a moment, their arms still around each other. Then, she leans in again—but instead of her mouth touching his, he feels her forehead hit the slope of his shoulder. He lets his arms tighten around his back.

He stands there for a second, not really sure what to do.

“You okay?” he finally manages, and decides that the best thing he can probably do is squeeze her a little, which he hopes isn’t awkward.

She mutters something into his shoulder, and the only word he catches is “can’t”.

“Mai, what? I can’t understand you.”

She pulls back, then, fully, extracting her arms from around his sides and letting her hands drop. It’s his turn to search her face. She looks… tired, mostly.

“I can’t do this,” she says.

“What?” he asks, heart sinking.

She shakes her head and turns her back to him, walking over to sit on the side of his bed. He follows her, confused.

Well, not fully confused. He has to admit that he’s not actually that surprised, given how she’s been lately. That’s not to say that he can believe that this is happening now.

He sits down next to her, making sure to leave her space. She doesn’t look at him.

“I don’t think we should be together,” she says.

He wants to ask her what she means, but he figures that that actually, it’s pretty clear. So instead...

“Why?”

She sighs. “It doesn’t have anything to do with you.”

He moves so that he’s kneeling on the bed, his whole body turned to face her. “No. Really. Why?”

She finally turns to look at him, her face inscrutable and tight. Then she loosens, like she’s made a decision.

“Maybe if you were a girl…” she says quietly, shaking her head almost imperceptibly.

It takes the gears in his head a few seconds to make sense of that, but… oh. _Oh_. So she’s… huh. And it’s weird, because he has this feeling that’s almost like relief, like now that he knows it wasn’t just because he was… _bad_ , or something, things are _okay_ , like being broken up with is just… neutral, or something, like—

He realizes that she’s looking at him like she’s expecting something from him—negative or positive, he’s not sure what. And… how _does_ he feel about this? That’s a question he has yet to ask himself.

He thinks about his father’s stance on… what term did he use? Deviants, maybe? Degenerates? The topic didn’t come up much, not with the laws and the censors, but when it did—it was clear that _that sort of thing_ , people who were willing to be _with_ someone the same gender as them were not desirable, not even _tolerable_ most of the time.

But it’s _Mai_ , so she can’t be bad—he knows her. He’s known her since they were kids. And he loves her—he really does. She’s family, whether they’re dating or not. Oh, and also— _fuck_ his father. It’s not like he was right about much of anything—frankly, the fact that that was something he believed should probably signify that it wasn’t the right way to think.

“Okay,” he tells her. “That’s okay.”

She quirks her lips at him, takes his right hand in both of hers, and squeezes it.

“Thanks.”

\---

They talk for a couple of hours about the future, and decide one major thing: for both of their sakes, they’ll decide to continue to act like they’re in a relationship for the foreseeable future. It’s just the mutually beneficial thing to do; it lets Mai stay in the palace without question ( _We’re still friends, right?_ He asks her, and she just snorts, like the question is too stupid to even answer) and saves him from the complications of people knowing that he’s romantically unattached. He’s a little worried the nobility would see his lack of a partner as availability, and he does not have time to go to dinner with the daughters of all of the richest families.

She stays the night, because they’re both worried about the speculation people will do if she leaves his room so late. They end up curled together in Zuko’s bed, and it’s the least awkward it’s been in months.  
It’s… nice, actually, to not feel like he’s supposed to be kissing her or something. He finds he doesn’t really want to.

 _Did I ever?_ He thinks as he drifts off. And the answer… well, the answer has to be yes, right?

And then he’s asleep.

\---

He doesn’t usually meet with his advisors on Saturdays or Sundays, so he doesn’t get the chance to tell them about his new situation with Mai until Monday. Moto, for his part, seems almost happy that Zuko’s been broken up with.

“Good,” he tells him. “Less girls, more ruling.”

Wai looks pointedly at Moto. “He’s been doing plenty of ruling.” Then she turns to Zuko. “Are you okay?”

“Yes,” Zuko tells her, and it’s true. It’s a little worrying, actually—he doesn’t think breakups are supposed to go so smoothly. If anything, things have almost been _better_ with Mai since. They spent time together twice over the weekend, and the atmosphere between them was surprisingly relaxed.

Wai narrows her eyes at him like there’s something she isn’t seeing, but otherwise, they take it well. Both advisors even like that they’re still pretending to be together, which Zuko wasn’t sure was going to be the case.  
He feels good about it.

\---

Toph shows up at the palace the next day, which he finds out when a guard comes up to him near the end of a meeting and tells him that there’s a kid in a green dress and no shoes outside yelling about how she knows the fire lord. He says goodbye to the group (they’re talking about trains, again, so he figures that his leaving isn’t the greatest loss), and goes to meet her.

Toph is chatting up a confused-looking guard when she notices him, but she leaves her conversation mid-sentence to run at him and throw herself into his midsection with a yell that sounds suspiciously like “sifu hotman”. It feels a little bit like he’s been hit with a rock (which is another thing that could have happened, and he’s _very grateful_ it did not), but he hugs her back as soon as he’s regained his balance.

He ends up prying her off of him so he can show her to the rooms he’s had prepared for her. On their way, she tells him how she got to the Fire Nation (an epic journey, according to Toph, featuring a litany of terrifying obstacles from dolphin piranhas to sandbenders—“ _fucking sandbenders_ ,” Toph says). He’s pretty sure that what actually happened was basically that Aang and Katara dropped her off somewhere in the western Earth Kingdom and she hitched a ride on a freight balloon, but it’s more entertaining the way she tells it, so he just chimes in when he can, because while Toph is usually a little quiet, she occasionally finds it difficult to shut up when she gets excited. He drops her off at the room, makes her promise to get settled (though the only thing she’s carrying seems to be a pack that looks like it holds _maybe_ a change of clothes or two), and tells her that he’ll be back in an hour to bring her to dinner with Mai.

\---

He gets ready and then comes back to find Toph, who, predictably, is not in her room. Not that it’s any challenge to find her—he’s pretty sure he can hear some earth-moving happening outside in the nearest courtyard.  
He puts his head around the doorframe leading outdoors, and yes, there she is, hands reaching out towards a pile of haphazardly stacked pebbles that she seems to have extracted from the ground.

“Toph?” He calls.

She turns to him, grinning. “Already felt ya, your fieriness. Had to try out some bending on this sweet, sweet Fire nation soil.”

“How is it?”

“All right,” she says. “It’s not ice, so that’s a win.”

“How long did Aang and Katara keep you up in the South Pole?”

Toph rolls her eyes. “Longer than they said they would. Twinkle Toes wanted to get off to the Air Temples to pick up some scrolls or something, but once he saw how happy Katara was with her little family and all, he agreed to stay a little more. I didn’t feel solid ground for weeks. _Weeks_.”

He smiles. “How was everyone?”

“Good,” she says. “Trying to get things going. Rebuilding. Hakoda’s chief, so he’s busy, Katara’s all enchanted with Aang, which is disgusting, by the way, and Sokka’s fine.”

“Fine?” he asks, confused by her lack of elaboration.“Yeah. Don’t tell him I told you this, but I think he feels a little bit pent up or something. He told me he misses being out there saving the world or whatever.”

Zuko can relate.

They’ve long since moved on from the topic by the time they meet Mai in the same restaurant they had their last date in. She’s already there, as usual, sipping at a glass of tea. He takes a spot to her right around the tabletop’s corner, and Toph sits on Mai’s other side, across from him. They order as soon as they can, because Toph’s hungry from traveling ( _“I could eat a camelephant”_ ). At first, they’re mostly quiet as they eat, but as Toph’s stomach begins to reach capacity, she starts to ask questions.

The first few are just about policy—easy enough to answer, though difficult to answer especially _interestingly_. But then…

“So how are you guys?” she asks, the tail end of an extra spicy fire noodle disappearing into her mouth. “Relationship-wise?”

He and Mai look at each other, because _fuck_. They definitely should have planned for this.

He lets Mai take the lead.

“Good,” she says cooly.

“Yep!” he echoes, maybe unhelpfully.

She narrows her eyes at him, pausing for a second.

“What are you lying about?” she says to him.

Okay, definitely unhelpfully.

He looks at Mai, because they should have been able to predict this, but with no plan, there’s no way they’re going to get around Toph’s sense for lies. Mai rolls her eyes at him, like _thanks for exposing us with your shaky composition, dumbass_ , but also like _what the hell did we expect_.

Zuko takes a second to figure out how to phrase it, but fuck it.

“We broke up,” he says, trying to keep it relatively quiet just in case someone’s listening in.

“WHAT?” Toph almost yells, rising a few inches into the air.

Mai hisses at her and yanks her down, muttering something about being seen in public, and Zuko lowers his head, trying to avoid being recognized.  
Toph, for her part, does not seem abashed. “You _broke up_?” she asks them, a little more quietly. “I never saw it coming.”

“Do you ever _see_ anything coming?” he asks.

Toph glares at him. “You know what I meant.” She takes a moment. “Why?”

He’s not really sure how to answer _that_ one, so he looks at Mai.

She sighs.

“I figured out that I like women,” she tells Toph, who who considers it for a second, then nods.

“Okay,” she says, and Zuko is a little taken aback by the lack of drama. “You know, my aunt did, too. I didn’t like her wife. She treated me like a kid.”

“You _are_ a kid,” Mai tells her.

Toph frowns. “Well, yeah,” she says. “But she didn’t have to _treat_ me like one.”

Mai rolls her eyes and informs Toph that for all the public knows, she and Zuko are still dating, thank you very much, and that they would appreciate it if she would refrain from announcing their relationship status to the world, and then the conversation moves on, but Zuko’s not really paying attention, because… _what_? Toph didn’t question it? At all? And did Mai know that Toph wouldn’t, or did she take a chance? He’d have to talk to her about this—it would be kind of destructive to their whole pretend-dating thing if Mai told someone and they, like, actually stood up and yelled something about it…

“Zuko, what do you think?” Toph is looking at him. Mai is, too.

“Sorry, what?”

“I was asking you about the festival,” Toph informs him.

He starts to ask what the hell she’s talking about, but it kind of seems like she’s already explained it, so he just asks her to explain it again.

Apparently, it’s Aang’s idea—one that Toph is ardently backing.

“You know,” she says, “Sometimes Twinkle Toes’ ideas are pretty air-headed, but this one I can get behind. He said it should be in three months—a year from the day they made you Fire Lord. He wants it to be a whole international unity thing, with, like, people from all over.”

He raises an eyebrow. “I’m surprised you’re that excited about unity.”

“I’m _extremely_ excited about unity,” she tells him, crossing her arms in mock offense. “But I’m also extremely excited about food. And bending tournaments. And fireworks.”  
“How do you observe fireworks?” Mai asks, amused.

“I feel the vibrations.”

He takes a second to think about it. Actually, it makes a lot of sense—he’s not sure why he hasn’t already been planning a festival (well, probably because of the five hundred other things he needs to plan, but those are beside the point). One of the long-term goals he’s laid out for his advisors is reintroducing pre-war Fire Nation culture, and a festival would be a great way to do it, not to mention a probable boost of national morale. And there’s the international aspect—if they can get other nations in as well, it could function, just as Aang planned, as a statement of unity.  
And, of course, he could probably get his friends to come. He misses them.

“It’s a good idea,” he tells Toph.

She smiles wickedly. “So you’re in?”

He wishes he could give her a clear-cut answer, but…

“I’ve got to talk to some people,” he says. “And I’m not sure who’s going to plan it—I’ve got so much on my plate right now, I’m not sure—”  
Toph sits up straighter. “I’ll plan it.” she says.

He imagines her yelling at a group of officials. It’s funny, but also a slightly worrying prospect. “Toph, I don’t know…”

“I’ll help,” Mai says.

And, okay. He trusts her.

“I’ll ask about it tomorrow,” he tells them, and takes a sip of his tea.

\---

Once they’ve walked Toph back to her room, Zuko pulls Mai over to a servant’s passage on the side of a hall and checks both ways. Once he’s sure nobody is around, he asks her the question he’s been wanting to ask her all night.

“He did you know Toph was gonna be cool about it?”

Mai looks a little confused, then figures out what he’s talking about.

“Oh. About me?”

He nods affirmatively.

She brushes it off. “It’s a regional thing. The Earth Kingdom has different views about a lot of stuff.”

“How did you know that?”

“I took a class on international cultures at the Fire Academy. They were pretty clear that the Earth Kingdom’s views on _degeneracy_ were a lot less _civilized_ than ours. And Toph is from the South, so they’re even more okay with it. The water tribes are too, mostly.”

And that’s… _interesting_. Zuko’s never actually thought about it before, but it makes sense. He doesn’t get much of a chance to actually think on it, though, because Mai’s moving on.

“Anyways. I’m going to visit your sister in a few days, and I was wondering if you’d like to come along.”

And… _what_?Zuko immediately feels guilty, because he realizes it’s been probably a week since he even thought about Azula, and months since he’d visited her. He’d gotten busy, and she hadn’t exactly been talkative when he had gone… but it’s not an excuse. She’s his _sister_ , he shouldn’t…

“Okay, pity party over,” Mai tells him, not letting him slip into his thoughts. “Are you coming or not?”

“I… yeah,” he tells her.

“Cool,” she says. “Meet me by the front gate on Saturday at eight. Dress casual.”

\---

The next afternoon, Toph sticks her head in the door as he sits doing paperwork.

“The festival is on,” she says.

“What?” he asks. “I haven’t even talked to the people I’d need to—“

“Me and Mai have got it figured out,” she reassures him. “Also, you’ve got a strand out of your ponytail.”

He puts a hand to the back of his neck—infuriatingly, she’s right.

\---

He gets to the gate five minutes early on Saturday. He’s wearing his least formal clothes, including a tunic with a hood that he’s hoping he can use to cover up his scar.

He paces for a few minutes, pausing only to make small talk with the guards by the gate, who are decently pleasant, until Mai comes out, just a few minutes late. She looks tired.

“Sorry,” she mutters. “Let’s get going.”

They slip out and disappear into the roads of Caldera City. Azula’s facility isn’t too far away—some wanted him to relocate her to somewhere distant, but he figured that if she managed to break out, proximity wouldn’t do all that much for her. Besides, the best places were all in the capitol.

And, of course, there’s also a personal aspect. He wants to be able to visit her. And, honestly, it seems unnecessarily cruel to lock her up far away. She’s already been stripped of her power, her status, and her family. It doesn’t feel right to banish her to some far corner of the world on top of that.

He knows how it feels to be banished by your family. It feels… well, bad. And he refuses to be like his father.

“I’m telling her about us,” Mai informs him, her voice hard, like she’s expecting him to fight her.

“Why?”

Mai looks away. “She’s crazy. But she’s also one of my best friends. I think I owe it to her.”

“Okay,” he tells her. She seems surprised, but he’s not worried about it. It’s not like Azula’s going to be getting out to spread the information any time soon, an even if she does, who will take it? She’s a patient in a mental health facility—it would be easy enough for him to dismiss her claims as delusions to the press.

They don’t talk much after that, but the morning breeze and the easy bustle of the streets make the walk go by fast. It’s only 8:30 when they arrive: usually, they wouldn’t be allowed in before visiting hours began, but the workers know Mai (she must come a lot more than he’d noticed) and they look at him with a quiet mix of reverence and disbelief as soon as he takes off his hood to show them his scar, so they’re allowed in early.  
Azula is already awake when they get to her room. She’s meditating, actually—sitting on the floor, back straight, eyes closed. She doesn’t look at them when the door opens.

“Hello, Mai,” Azula says, her piercing voice sending a strange nostalgia through Zuko’s body.

“Hi, Azula,” Mai says, and then waits a minute before elbowing Zuko in the side. He suppresses a yelp and looks at her.

She sends him a pointed look.

“Hello, Azula.”

At that, Azula snaps her eyes open. “Zuzu.”

“Happy to see me?” he asks.

“Extraordinarily.”

Her tone is dry, but it actually seems like somewhere, deep down, she actually means it. Maybe. Maybe he’s just projecting. It’s a little surprising, but it’s nice to see her. She even seems better than she’d been a few month ago. More herself. He’s not sure if that’s a good thing, but he hopes it is.

“How are you?” Mai is asking.

“The same,” says Azula, dismissive. She’s uncharacteristically calm about it. “Not much changes here, you know. How are you two? Especially you, Zuzu. I haven’t seen you in so long.”

And there’s the guilt. “I’m all right,” he says. “Busy.”

Azula gives him a little pout. “Poor, busy firelord.”

He’s about to make a biting remark of his own when Mai interjects, apparently smelling potential conflict.

“Actually, Azula, we have something to tell you.” Mai looks at him, then back to Azula. “Zuko an I are no longer dating.”

Azula does not seem surprised. “Oh?” she asks the picture of polite disinterest. “I always thought it would happen.”

Mai rolls her eyes, like she’s had this conversation with her before. “Azula…”

“I just always knew!” Azula protests, her eyes glinting with worrying mirth. “About both of your… _proclivities_.”

He’s trying to figure out exactly what she means by that when Mai cuts in.

“Azula. We’ve talked about this before,” she sighs. “It’s just me. Not...”

“Sure,” says Azula, like she doesn’t believe something. And _spirits_ , now he gets it.

A weird, out of place assertion from his lying sister is not the sort of thing that should make him angry, but he suddenly wants to hit something. It’s the indignity of it that gets to him—because he’s… he’s not. He’s just… _not_. And he’s okay with Mai (and with Toph’s aunt, he supposes), but for her to insinuate that about _him_ … it’s just _wrong_.

Azula smiles at him like she’s won something. “Got something to say, Zuzu?”

“No,” he grits out, trying to keep it cool.

Azula keeps the smug look. “He can’t even see it,” she mutters. It feels like gloating, and he clenches his fists and suppress the urge to make a snide comment back in her direction.

“Be nice or we’re leaving,” Mai cuts in, and that seems to take her down a peg. Azula flops back so she’s leaning against the bed, rolling her eyes as she does it.“Anyway,” she says. “Nice weather we’re having lately.”

Mai sits down on the floor and engages in small talk for the better part of the next hour. Zuko stands. He’s relieved when a nurse comes in and tells them that Azula needs to go to a group session.

\---

“What was that?” Mai asks him as soon as they get onto the street

“What?” he asks. He knows what she means, but he doesn’t really want to talk about it.

“The whole thing…” she shakes her head. “Never mind. But really. If you’re not okay with me, you can tell me.”

“What?” he asks. “No, I…”

“Because your reaction to when she said that about you was pretty intense.”

“No!” he says, and this is actually making him feel kind of guilty. “I didn’t mean it that way. It just… I just… It’s not true,” he finishes lamely.

She stops, and he stops with her, looking her in the eye. She spends a moment just looking at him.

“Okay,” she says, and it makes him wonder what she’s thinking, but it also ends the conversation.

\---

That next week, Toph asks him if she can accompany him to a meeting he’s having with the Earth Kingdom about their ongoing reparations. He talks to his advisors about it, and they can’t seem to find a reason why she shouldn’t (somewhat surprisingly, given the fact that he’s pretty sure the main impression Toph has left on the palace is that she’s _loud_ ), so he takes her in.

She sits to his left. On the other side of the table, there’s the Earth Kingdom’s main ambassador, Ko, a tall man with a wide, defined face. On either side of him sit two aides; one a younger man and the other a woman Zuko would just consider middle-aged.

The earth ambassador inclines his head. Zuko reciprocates, then gets down to it: “What do you desire?”

Toph doesn’t interfere for the first part of the meeting, but when they take a break, she pulls him to the side, her tone bossy in that harsh-but-endearing way only she can pull off. He can tell he’s going to get some kind of lecture.

“You’re doing okay—“

“Toph, I really don’t need to be lectured—”

She puts up a hand. “Yes, you do. You’re doing all right, but you need to be firmer. Hold your ground a little longer—it’s an Earth Kingdom thing. Trust me. I had about four separate diplomacy tutors as a kid. _Four_. It was terrible.”

He doesn’t really know how to respond to that, but once the debate resumes, he takes her up on it. Before he makes concessions, he looks at Toph—mostly, he just looks bored, but a few times, she meets his eye, he keeps pressing, and he gets a better deal.

It turns out it’s good to have a friend who knows what’s up.

\---

It’s late at night a few days later when Zuko is jerked awake to the sound of shouts outside his door. It sounds like guards, and people he can’t identify, and—is that _Mai_?

The door to his room bursts open, and a man breaks in. He’s old, and looks a little manic, mouth and eyes wide and fierce. He’s holding what looks to be some sort of package out in front of him as he runs.  
Zuko’s on his feet almost as soon as he opens his eyes, his hand going straight for where he keeps his swords next to his bed. He locks them in front of them in defense, reeling and blinking sleep out of his eyes, but before he can make a move, the guards come bursting out of the doorway behind the attacker.

“Stay back!” one of them—it’s Yan, he realizes—yells to him. Zuko moves a bit, keeping his swords up, and the two guards throw themselves at the attacker, forcing him into a corner. It doesn’t take long until it’s seemingly over, and one of the guards is fumbling for the hand restraints that they all carry on their waistbands. The other watches the captive, trying to make sure he doesn’t get anywhere.

And that’s when Zuko sees it. From where he’s standing, he can see that the man is holding a package behind his back in his left hand, which he can sense is beginning to summon fire as discreetly as possible. It’s almost tangible in the air—at least, to him, but apparently not to the guards—the slight buzz of energy, the beginning of the smell of parchment and— _Agni_ —gunpowder.

He’s paralyzed for a second—if he tells the guards, the man will likely elect to set off the bomb all at once, but if he doesn’t—well, then they’re just as—

_Zing!_

And there’s Mai. What would he do without her?

The guard has found the restraint, and the two of them have moved quickly to restrain and chi-block him (he’d asked Ty Lee to train the palace staff before she’d gone with the Kyoshi Warriors). Next to where he’d stood, the parchment corner of the bomb is speared into the wall, stuck into the wallpaper with the point of a stiletto.

There’s a brief hubbub, during which the guards make sure he’s all right, and then they have to call for replacements before taking the man to a cell, and then somehow Toph is alerted and shows up in her sleeping clothes, barefoot (as always) and ready to fight. And by the end, it’s just the three of them—Mai, Zuko, and Toph.

Mai looks at him. “What do we do now?”

“Go back to sleep?” he offers.

Toph glares at him. “We are not _going back to sleep_ , Sifu Hotman. You just almost got _murdered_!”

Mai rolls her eyes at Toph. “It’s happened before.”

“ _What_?”

And that’s how Zuko ends up leading them to the sparring rooms in the basement.

The rooms are old and a little damp. When they were created, they were meant as venues for palace residents and guests to practice their combat and bending skills where they wouldn’t be underfoot, but at some point between the palace’s initial construction and the present day, they’d fallen out of use.

Zuko had found them when he was nine. He’d been wandering aimlessly and stumbled into one. The back corner was being used to store a few boxes of out-of-date helmets, but the rest of the room was wide open, and he’d recognized it as a place he was able to use for his own. He’d spent a fair amount of time down there as a kid, especially when he needed a place to practice his (often embarrassing) bending.He opens the door to the room for Mai and Toph, and a blast of humid air hits them. He hasn’t been down here in a while—Fire Lord duties have kept him too busy to mope around his childhood haunts—but he’s still got some of his gear: a pair of swords, a few miscellaneous weapons, and a first aid kit for patching up cuts.

“I didn’t know this was here,” Mai tells him, and he nods.

“Most people don’t. Found it when I was a kid.”

Toph, meanwhile, has walked to the middle of the room and stopped.

“It’s _great_ down here. Very hard packed. I can feel all the vibrations!”

As if to demonstrate, she moves, and a few scattered bricks rip themselves from the brick floor and throw themselves at Zuko, who dodges them with a startled yelp.

“Think fast, your Fieriness!” Toph yells, and launches another volley at them just as he picks up the practice swords he keeps for down here. He bats them away, glad he’s not using his good ones—the rocks leave dents in the metal that he’s pretty sure won’t come out easily.

“Come on!” Toph shouts at him. “Bend!”

And, well…

Zuko hasn’t bended in quite a while, he realizes. It’s just… not something he does any more. Ever since the war ended and he was declared Fire Lord, there’s just no need—no one to fight, at least not really. He’s got guards around him all the time.

And, if he’s really, really honest, he has some kind of… feeling. About fire. A feeling that makes it a little hard to firebend. It’s not a _negative_ feeling, nothing like that, but the thing is that most of what he does every day’s direct purpose is to repair the ridiculous, horrible things that fire has done to the world, and after spending weeks and months staring into the faces of people who have been personally hurt by fire like his, well… he just can’t get too excited about it. And he _knows_ that fire isn’t _bad_ or _evil_ or _angry_ in and of itself, of course—the Sun Warriors taught him that much—but…

He shakes his head at Toph. “I’ll stick with my swords,” he tells her.

She turns her hear to him. “Why?” she asks.

“I’ve got to practice with them. I haven’t used them in forever,” he tells her, and it’s almost the truth.

She spends few more uncomfortable seconds standing quietly, no doubt trying to detect his heartbeat through the floor.

“Well,” she says, “I’m not going to keep bending against your swords, because we all know I would completely crush you without any worthwhile fight at all, so you can hit at Mai while I break some rocks.”

Mai looks at him and assumes a fighting stance, drawing a knife from somewhere behind her back. “You ready?”

He crouches and brandishes his swords. “Come at me.”

\---

They spend a glorious hour scraping blades and sweating, and it’s over too soon. They walk back upstairs together, mostly because he’s not sure if Toph and Mai know where the fuck they are. Toph splits off first. Her sleeping clothes are now covered in a thin layer of dusted rock, and there are a few pebbles in her hairline—she looks almost comical. She yawns, tells them goodnight, and then, uncharacteristically, traps Zuko (or at least his waist down, because she’s short) in an awkward hug.

“Don’t get assassinated, sifu hotman,” she tells him, and he’s not sure what to do, so he just pats her on the head. She breaks off, high fives Mai, and shuffles into her doorway. Even through her closed door, he thinks he can hear her throw herself onto her bed.

“I love Toph,” he tells Mai after they start walking, which is kind of a weird thing to say, but it’s true.

“Me too,” she replies.

“Really?” he’s not sure what he expected them to think of each other. He’d kind of assumed that they wouldn’t mesh, like their personalities would be too different.

“Yes. We hang out, actually. When you’re not around. Sometimes she makes me take her into town so she can use her earthbending to cheat on those rigged games.”

“ _Really_?” he says. He knew Toph and Mai sometimes spent time together, but he hadn’t been sure what they actually _did_ , and, honestly, gambling didn’t really seem like Mai’s thing.

“Yeah. It’s nice, actually. I've always been fine being an only child, but in some ways, having her around is like having a little sister.”

Zuko agrees, and they walk in silence until they reach Mai’s door, at which point she turns around and leans against the wall, facing him.

“Why wouldn’t you bend back there?” she asks him, face impassive.

He’s caught a little off guard. “I… needed to practice my swords.”

Mai narrows her eyes at him.

“I’m _fine_ ,” he adds.

She lets it go, but he can tell she won’t be forgetting any time soon.

“If you want to talk…” she tells him.

She hugs him, he squeezes back, they say goodnight, and he walks back to his room alone. The sky is starting to lighten the slightest bit, but despite the fact that he’s going to be miserably tired and was almost killed a few hours ago, he feels good.

**Author's Note:**

> If you're reading this note, thank you for clicking on and reading this fic! I know this chapter didn't really touch on Sokka (except for that letter), but I hope I included enough other stuff to keep it interesting. I needed to establish some things before throwing him in. Next chapter, there will be Sokka (and Aang and Katara and Iroh), so look forward to that.  
> Speaking of next chapter, I'm not quite sure when I'll have another chapter out, but it'll probably be within the next two weeks or so. It took me quite a while to write this one, but I've planned out the whole plot in advance, and I'm hoping I can be quick about writing.  
> Also, speaking about writing--how does beta-ing work? I'm rather new to the fanfic-writing scene (longtime reader, short-time writer), and I'm not quite sure how people become betas or get people to beta their work. I'm interested in it, because I find it difficult to edit my on stuff (and love editing others'), but I assume the process includes making friends on tumblr or something, and I'm not on tumblr (call me basic, but I've always found it's user interface to be unduly complicated and it's put me off of it).  
> Anyway, thank you for reading! If you're in the mood, I literally live for comments, so if you have anything to say, it would be much appreciated. I'm hoping the characters are at least mostly in-character, so let me know if they are or aren't! Also, how do you guys feel about going more in-depth into some of the political aspects of Zuko's life? I've noticed that a lot of post-ATLA-Firelord-Zuko fics skim over a lot of the politics/concrete change, and I'm trying to make those things--meetings, reforms, etc.--a little more present in my narrative. Do you like that, or do you favor a story that focuses completely on characters and relationships?


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